Feeling Empty? Arthur Brooks Has a Formula for a Meaningful Life

When was the last time you felt truly bored? And when was the last time your life felt genuinely meaningful? For Harvard social scientist Arthur Brooks, those two questions are more connected than you might think.

This week on Hello Monday, Jessi Hempel sits down with Arthur Brooks — professor at Harvard Business School, bestselling author, and one of the most compelling thinkers on happiness and purpose — to dig into his new book, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. 

In this episode, Jessi and Arthur discuss:

• Why so many high-achievers feel empty even when everything is going right
• How our devices are literally pushing us into the wrong hemisphere of the brain, and why eliminating boredom may have accidentally eliminated meaning
• The psychology of strivers: why so many driven, successful people are secretly running on a fear that idleness means they'll stop being loved
• The "arrival fallacy": why reaching your goals so often feels like a letdown, and what that tells you about whether you were chasing the right things
• The four types of career paths, and why "spiral" careers — built from a series of reinventions — may be the most fulfilling model for this moment
• How to retrofit a sense of calling into the job you already have
• Arthur's gut-check formula for evaluating any career opportunity: 80% excitement, 20% fear, 0% deadness
• Why suffering and meaning share the same part of the brain — and why trying to avoid all pain may be the very thing standing between you and a purposeful life

This episode is for anyone who has achieved what they set out to achieve and still found themselves wondering, "Is this it?" — and for anyone still figuring out what they're actually working toward.

This conversation was recorded live. If you’re a premium member, you can watch the extended version, featuring lots more audience questions, here.

Follow Arthur Brooks and Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn.